Field study starts

Garrett left today to start his field study. He just went to set up their equipment for a day or two and will be back for the weekend, but after that he is going for longer stretches of time. I guess that means I have lots of free time to get more work done? Hmmm...that's not really a plus, is it?

We went to see Invincible last night at one of the cheap theatres. This company called Empire has started buying all the crappy old theatres left around since Famous Players and Cineplex Odeon merged. I like competition, so at first I thought it was a good thing, but then I noticed they are putting absolutely no money into these theatres. The movie Invincible is actually a Disney movie (which we didn't know until we got there) so it was a little cheesy but very good for the whole family. I enjoyed it well enough - it leaves you feeling good at the end, which I like. But because the sound in the theatre was so bad, there were times when we couldn't hear what people were saying because the background music was too loud. It was a little bit annoying, and I'm sure the movie play just didn't care. Hey, at least we only paid $6.50 to go see it.

Sumo party

We went to the ultimate league year-end party last night to enjoy a free chicken dinner, in addition to a pretty fun party. There was a live band, followed by a DJ and dancing. We knew a lot of the people there, so it was a fun time, but probably the most fun part was the sumo suits! The league rented out the sumo suits, mats and helmets for the evening, and we availed ourselves of their use a few times. Joelle and I challenged each other to a match, but I have to say we weren't that interesting, because we just pushed each other around and giggled a lot. Garrett and JF went next, and they almost choreographed so that they put on a really good show. It started out with JF running and launching himself sideways at Garrett, so that Garrett could throw him to the ground and then slam down on top of him. They didn't end their matches as soon as possible, because they would then pick each other up and do some more tricks. They were vey entertaining and certainly opened the door for more creative matches as the night went on. It was a great party and a fun end to the summer league of ultimate.

Bon Cop Bon Movie

A bunch of us went to see 'Bon Cop Bad Cop' at the theatre on Friday night. This is a film out of Montreal which is one of a kind due to its bilingual story line. Basically, a murdered man is found on the sign at the Ontario and Quebec border, requiring the cooperation of the two police forces in order to solve the crime. Thus, a Toronto straight-arrow cop is teamed with a Montreal off-the-records kind of cop. Both are bilingual and there is probably more french than english spoken, but I stopped noticing the subtitles after awhile and didn't miss (most) of the humour. It's a really funny movie and I laughed a lot more than I expected to. They played up on most of the Canadian stereotypes and French/English tensions in a really entertaining way. Plus, aside from the comedic part, it's a movie with lots of action and is actually a bit gory sometimes. In any case, I really enjoyed it and I would recommend renting it if you are looking for something to watch one evening.

Highschool shadow

This week I have a highschool student following me around in the lab. She is the daughter of my co-worker's friends, and really wants to get into forensics, so Darci asked if Chloe could come into the lab and see a bit of what it's about. Now, I don't do 'forensics', but I can do a lot of the techniques on CSI, and do so on a regular basis. I do not go to crime scenes and it DOES NOT take 1 hour to genotype someone (it takes days), amongst other things that occur on TV in an unrealistic fashion. However, the lab skills involved are the same as seen on TV, so Chloe came in to try her hand at science. So far, I think she's had a really great time and has enjoyed the tasks she's done. I've let her do a lot of things herself, so she's really had a 'hands-on' experience, and is actually quite skilled at the things I have her do, considering she is so young and inexperienced at it. She's a lot better than some fourth year university students I used to know, who planned on going to med school....hmm...

In any case, I hope that I can inspire her to pursue her science interests in the future! As a grad student, I've really enjoyed teaching students who have come into our lab, and look forward to doing more. In fact, I have a another great teaching experience with my co-worker's 11 year-old daughter, who comes in to the lab with her mom every month or so and spends the morning with me. She's a precocious little girl who is quite capable of doing the tasks I set out for her, and since she's been coming to the lab and working with me, she's been getting A+'s in science! Which I think is just fantastic and I am happy I can be a positive influence in her schoolwork.

Boxing Bonnie

Recently, one of my best friends from Vancouver moved to Edmonton. Yay!! Bonnie is starting grad school at U of A, so she'll be here for the next few years. She recently sent me some pictures of her past boxing matches from back in Vancouver (she's a tough chick!). They are a bit blurry but pretty cool. She said I could put them up here, so here they are! Bonnie is in blue.

Dragonboating finals

The last day of dragonboating started with a very early race time and a very tired dragonboating team. We dragged our butts up the race track and had a decent time (2min20sec), however we came in second place, which meant we didn't go to the finals, rather to the consolation round. We weren't terribly upset about it, because we'd had a great weekend so far. For our last race of the day, we really put it to the other teams and took our race to the maximum, having our best race of the weekend. However, we we got our time, we were shocked to see it was 2 min 43 seconds! Way slower! We didn't feel very slow! We were well ahead of the other two boats for most of the race. We decided the current must have been much stronger, but we ended up finding out later that they actually made the course 30 yards longer for the afternoon races! Here are some pictures from our last races:After our race we all went to the beer gardens for a team drink and signed our team flag. We're going to put that up in the department.
We didn't end up with any medals after all (there we no medals for second place of the Novice Cup) but we did enter the 'Best Cheer' competition and got up front to practice our cheer for everyone at the awards ceremony. See below:We didn't win this competition either - the team that did win had both Chinese and African cheers incorporated and was far fancier than ours. But overall we had a really great weekend and it was a great experience for us all. Plus, it really did a lot to build friendships between people in our department. That sounds cheesy, I know, but it's true and I've really enjoyed it!

2nd place and 32nd place

Today was our main race day at the dragonboat festival. We had an early start at 9:20am, considering we had to be there about an hour early for our race. This morning we raced in Lane 1, which is the heavier, slower lane. We had a decent time at 2 min 31 secs, even though we could definately tell the water slowed us down. After our race, our awesome costumes earned us a spot on the Global News live morning show!! It was very exciting for us. I introduced us into the microphone and then we sang our team cheer to the camera! None of us got to see the footage, but I'm going to email them to see if we can get a copy. Our cheer goes as follows:

"22 Scientist in a boat,
Will we sink or will we float?
When we win we're gonna gloat,
22 Scientists in a boat!"

Here's a team photo taken shortly after that:Yes, I have a bike helmet on. It's part of my costume.

So it turns out we did qualify for the Novice Cup Final today, so we raced again at 11:30 against the other two top teams. Now, one of the other teams we were racing did not seem like novices - most had their own life jackets and paddles! We were not sure whether the race organizers let anyone register in the novice cup, or whether they actually check if a team is mostly novice. So in any case, we raced this pretty awesome team. We paddled hard and really dug deep, until we were neck and neck as we neared the finish line. I think our paddlers started looking over at the other boat near the end of the race though, because all of a sudden our timing was off and our boat started turning! This was a big problem for me because I had to correct our course so we wouldn't go outside the race buoy and be disqualified. I worked really hard at the oar to get us back in line and managed to keep us inside the buoy, but we lost some valuable time in our zig-zagging and ended up second. We were fairly disappointed, until we found out that we get medals for second place! Yay!
Here's our boat as we headed out to start our Novice Cup Final race:And here's the finish of the race. See how close it was!After some lunch, we raced our last heat at 1pm and had our best race yet. Even though our time wasn't as fast as Friday night (2 min 21 sec - the river was faster flowing today than yesterday), we were really tight with our timing and the paddlers really put it on to beat a very good team in the adjacent lane. We felt so great after that race and were overall happy with our performance for the day. We also had a lot of support in the crowd for this race, so we were pumped to perform well for our friends!
Here we are pulling away from the dock. That's me in the lab coat at the back!The finish line is marked on the far shore with the yellow pipe. Look how close we were at the finish again! We are the farthest team in the picture (brown boat). It turned out we beat that other team by 9 tenths of a second. And here we are pulling in to dock at the end of our day.Lastly, here is the team one last time in front of the Edmonton Dragon Boat Festival Banner:We ended up 32nd overall, out of 48 teams, which I think is pretty good. I'd like to point out that the team that beat us in the Novice Cup was WAY up in the team rankings, further convincing me that they shouldn't have been in that race with us. We race tomorrow morning and once more in the afternoon. Hopefully we can acquit ourselves just as well tomorrow, even though we'll be sore and tired!

Dragonboat festival - Novice Cup

Tonight was our first dragonboat race ever! Every single one of us were rookies, yet we took to the water to earn some respect and experience in the Novice Cup Challenge. At first, the race grounds were chaos and we didn't know what to do or where to go. Eventually we figured out all the administrative stuff and hoofed our team over to the docks where we waited for our heat - the third. It was great that we weren't the first heat, because we were able to watch a couple races before we had to climb in the boat and act like we knew what we were doing! The dragonboats were all decked out with ornate dragon heads and tails on the front and back, as well as a HUGE drum at the front. Soon, it was our turn to race! We strapped on our lifevests and hoisted our paddles, then loaded as usual. After a skillfully executed launch (by yours truly) we headed downstream to set ourselves up in lane 3. A speedboat with the race marshal directed the three boats so that each was sitting at the start line - this took several minutes of josseling up and downstream, but eventually they blew the horn. And we were off! All of our practice really paid off, as our timing was perfect, our power was consistent and our start was strong. Now, unbeknownst to us, lane 3 was the faster lane throughout the evening, with less current and drag in the water. However, regardless we still really hauled it when the starter gave us the signal, and maintained our speed for the duration of the race. By the end, we were 3 boat lengths ahead of the boat in lane 2. Right on!! Our time was 2min 18 secs! We were so proud of ourselves, and even really impressed, because we expected the race to take us about 3 and a half minutes! That's what we had been practicing throughout our training.

We will find out tomorrow if we race in the final of the Novice Cup, in addition to our two other races. The top three times out of the three heats race in the final, and we might be the third. There were two other teams that I know of with better times than ours - 2min 6 secs and 2 min 8secs (both in lane 3 too). It's almost too bad that there is such inequality between lanes - makes it hard to compete evenly with teams of the same skill level. Here are some pictures of the team and the river. The boats that are racing aren't us, because we didn't have anyone there to take pictures of us, but just imagine it was.

Crazy day

Today I had my committee meeting, which went well and apparently, my committee is happy with my progress. Great!

However the crazy part came after the work day. I went for beer/pizza to celebrate my friend's last day in my lab and afterwards headed outside to grab my bike and go home. I unlocked my bike from a sign post as two strangers were sitting down near my bike to have a smoke. I started wheeling my bike down the 1.5 foot ledge to the sidewalk before I climbed on, when I heard screeching and weird sounds. I quickly spun around to see a car driving forward out of the parking lot (when it should have had to reverse to get out of its parking spot) over one of the guys sitting on the curb!! The car dropped down the ledge onto the sidewalk where it stopped. It had pushed the guy a ways, from his seat on the ledge to the far edge of the sidewalk. The car stopped and a couple foreign exchange students climbed out to check on the guy they ran over. The guy was ok, but fairly shaken. He had cut up hands but I think that as the extent of his injuries. There were several spectators aside from myself around, and we wondered what to do in this situation. Do you call the police? The guy seemed ok. The car was mostly fine. Do you call the ambulance? Well, we were right across from the hospital, and since he could walk, he could just go over there to get checked out. I got a pen and paper and gave both groups my name and number, in case they need me as a witness. Then I went home.

If I had took a few seconds longer to grab my bike, I could have been pushed along with that other guy too! Scary!

So, it was a crazy day, in that how often do you see someone run over by a rogue car driving the wrong way out of a parking lot and over a ledge?

BBQ for Garrett

I had a Going-Away BBQ for Garrett at my place on Sunday night. We had a great turnout - Garrett had to run to the grocery store to get more burgers before we all ate! The evening was nice and relaxing, with dinner and cake followed with a fire and smores. Here are some of the pictures I took before the camera batteries died: I won't be blogging too much in the next few days. I have a committee meeting on Thursday, so I have to prepare for that. As well, I have dragonboating practice on Monday and ultimate on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Busy! This is followed with the Edmonton Dragonboat Festival next weekend! I'll have pictures from that event at the end of the week.

Presentation nerves

I found out today that I was selected to give an oral presentation at the Vancouver conference I'm attending in September. Eek! That will be the largest crowd I have ever presented to, so I'm sure I'll be very nervous before I get up there to talk. It will look good on my resume though, and my supervisor told me there is a lot of interest in my abstract, so it's encouraging that my project isn't completely silly or farfetched! I will worry about it more, though, once my committee meeting is over next week!

Spatially Challenged

On Friday night I went to Saskatoon for the annual Disc Odyssey Ultimate tournament. Our team was called 'Spatially Challenged' and we dressed ourselves in bandages to indicate we injured ourselves because of our lack of spatial awareness. We had a great time at the tournament and I even brought my friend Joelle into the world of ultimate for her first time (she loves the game, I might add). We played ultimate all day Saturday and part of Sunday, enjoying the dinner/party the tournament threw on Saturday night at one of Saskatoon's local pubs. Seeing as all of our beer was included in our tournament fees, the entire team enjoyed the provided beverages, some more than others. As a result, most of the team felt a little rough Sunday morning, however none more than Mic (say it like 'Mike', but spelled differently) who decided Sunday morning was a great time to eat a chicken salad sandwich from Tim Horton's for breakfast. This was the start of a very sick Mic, who we actually ended up leaving in the bush near the fields while we played our first two games. Hey - it was shady there at least (it was a hot day) and we left him with water, gatorade and the time to sleep it off.

While Mic was MIA in the bushes, the tournament coordinator walked around to all the teams and took their photo. Since Mic wasn't mobile, he didn't end up in the pictures. This is our team photo:Here's Mic during the team photo:
Mic, computer savvy that he is (apparently), decided to 'fix' the photo afterwards, since he missed out on it. Here's the modified version: Perhaps a little creepy but funny nonetheless.

Here are a few more photos from the tournament (forgive me for using ultimate lingo and not explaining what it all means):
My team, on the line before the pull (I am third from the right):Jason, setting up the defense to stop a huck:Jim, setting up to throw a huck:Jim and I, making Gatorade on the sideline:Joelle avoiding the defenseman, ready to pass the disc:Morgan on defense, ready for a foot block:

Pants off to Amanda

I have permission from my friend Amanda to publish her story. On Monday, she was meeting with the landlord of a place she wanted to rent for September 1st. She had to drop off her application and some information on herself at his office before dragonboating practice. She rushed home from school and changed into her clothes for paddling before heading over to his office. Once there, she handed over her stuff and talked to him for about 15 minutes before going to Sarah's house.

At Sarah's place, Sarah's boyfriend Doug grabbed something on the back of Amanda's pants. She gave him a funny look and asked him what he was doing. This was when Amanda discovered she had her pants on completely inside out. Her huge tag was sticking out the back with washing instructions proudly displayed for all to see. Somehow, she managed to pull her capris on and do up the complex button/zipper combo inside out without noticing. She says she remembers struggling to get the pants done up but then got it all zipped up and just continued on. So she met with her hopeful landlord with her pants inside out and didn't notice.

I am sure she'll get the apartment, but you have to wonder what the landlord thought of his future tenant who can't dress herself properly!